In fact, most Democratic hopes lately have come from their opponents' vices and not their own virtues.

November will be the last time that voters can punish George Bush and I expect they will. I think that, however, is close to the limit of Democratic hopes for the medium-term future. Their progress will be determined by Republican regress.

My hunch is that Democrats will capture House and Senate seats but not the House or Senate. And if they do, the victory will be fleeting and they will do poorly in 2008.

As the quotes from Thomas Frank and E.J. Dionne show, a defining impulse or attitude of many Democrats and liberals today is that Americans, because of evil manipulations by Republicans, do not know what is best for them and the party's job is to show them the light.

That is a temperament, and one which is not easily discernible in policy papers and campaign platforms. But voters can smell it a mile away. And lately, they think it stinks.

I think if anyone other than Obama or Clinton won the Democratic nomination, the democrats would have lost.

I think the prediction in the second quote will come true two years late.

But then, I'm just a hard-line moderate, not really trusting any of the far left, far right, or far-out Libertarians (they're off on their own axis--I think the most radical of them believe that their freedom to swing their fist means that I have to move my nose out of their way).

Regards//Larry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." -- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee

The first quote you chose stood out for me, too, but in a different way. It seems to me that this is how politics works. Party A is up, Party B is down. The only way to bring A down is to point out foibles (I do like that word). You can't win by saying how great you are anymore. You have to find the mistress, the bondage-themed stripper club, etc. to get anywhere these days.

On a linguistic note, what might we call this? It's not really just LCD, is it? We need a word to encompass this.

Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.